How might Galenaios and his fellow-slaves on the boat have hoped to have fared better if they had had a different master?
How does Hermon manage to escape? What sort of links does he exploit?
Can we use this text as a realistic depiction of social relations?
2.17 Alciphron, Letters, 2.24–5:32 Greek Literary Epistolography (Second/Third Century CE)
Salakonis, the name of the female correspondent, means arrogant, and Gemellus, the name of the male correspondent, could have been understood as an allusion to a euphemism for “testicle.”
Literature: Biraud and Zucker 2018.
Gemellus to Salakonis:
Why do you act so haughtily, Salakonis you wretch? Didn’t I take you up from the workshop, where you had to work beside that lame clothes mender? Didn’t I even do it without mother’s knowledge? Aren’t I keeping you as if you were some heiress to whom I had got married? But you’ve got on your high horse, you cheap little slave girl, and you never stop giggling and making fun of me. Won’t you cease from your arrogance, you wretch? I will show you your lover is your master, and I will have you roast barley in the countryside. Then you will learn by suffering into what misery you drove yourself.
Salakonis to Gemellus:
I can endure anything, except for sleeping with you, master. In the night I did not run away, nor was I hiding under the bushes, as you thought, but I slipped into the trough and lay there, with its curve around me as cover. And since I’ve decided to end my life by hanging myself, listen to one who speaks openly and clearly; my keenness to die strips away all my fear. I detest you, Gemellus. I loathe your shaggy body and avoid it like a fox; I loathe your foul mouth, which sends forth horrible smells from the bottom of your throat. Be damned to a horrid end, so horrible as you are. Go to some bleary-eyed peasant hag, her life hanging by a … single molar, her body perfumed by … pitch oil.
What are the respective statuses of Gemellus and Salakonis?
How are they represented in this text?
How does Salakonis respond to Gemellus’ demands?
What forms of slave labor are mentioned in the text? What role does sex play among these forms of labor?
Can we use this text as a realistic depiction of social relations?
2.18 Menander, The Shield, 238–45:33 Greek Comedy (End of Fourth/Early Third Century BCE)
Daos, the slave of a young Athenian who is believed to have been killed while on military campaign in Asia Minor, returns to Athens, to his master’s house, with the booty collected by the master. In this scene, Daos, who had accompanied his master on the campaign, is in conversation with a slave waiter. Hard labor at the mills is often presented as punishment for slaves. The Getai were a Thracian tribe.
Literature: Cox 2013; Konstan 2013; Bathrellou 2014; Harrison 2019.
Waiter: Be damned to perdition then, by Zeus, since you’ve done such a thing, you idiot. You had so much gold, and slaves, and you’ve returned bringing them back for your master? And you didn’t run away? Where on earth are you from?
Daos: From Phrygia.
Waiter: A good for nothing! A sissy! Only we, Thracians, are men! Oh Apollo, the Getai are the manly sort! That’s why the mills are full of us.
What does the waiter expect Daos to have done after his master’s death on campaign? How does he explain Daos’ behavior? If this was a serious conversation and not a buffoonish scene from a comedy, how do you think Daos could have justified his decision?
What are the ethnic identities of these two slaves?
How does the waiter present his own ethnic identity? What evidence does he bring in favor of his argument?
Can we take this dialogue as a realistic representation of how slaves perceived their ethnic identities and conversed with each other? Or is this merely the mirror image of Athenian assumptions about barbarian slaves?
2.19 Menander, Men at Arbitration, 538–49 and 557–66:34 Greek Comedy (End of Fourth/Early Third Century BCE)
The interlocutors here are two slaves: Habrotonon, a musician and hetaira working for a pimp, hired temporarily by a young Athenian man, and Onesimos, the valet of that Athenian man. The two are concocting a plan. Habrotonon, whose sexual advances have been rejected by the Athenian, will pretend to be the mother of a baby fathered by him. Then, she will look for the real mother.
Literature: Bathrellou 2012; Cox 2013; Vester 2013.
Onesimos:
But you don’t mention that you will become free. For as soon as he acknowledges you as the child’s mother, he will immediately free you, of course.
Habrotonon: I don’t know. But I’d like it to happen.
Onesimos: Don’t you know?! But what thanks will I get for this, Habrotonon?
Habrotonon: By Demeter and Persephone, I will regard you as the cause of all I might achieve.
Onesimos: But if you stop searching for her on purpose and let it drop, having thus deceived me, what will happen then?
Habrotonon: What for, dear? Do I seem to you to have set my heart upon having children? Just let me become free, gods! May this be my reward!
Onesimos:
I wish you would get it. […]
(Habrotonon exits; Onesimos remains alone on stage.)
Onesimos: The woman is full of ideas. When she saw that it’d be impossible to achieve freedom by the way of love and that she’s struggling in vain, she goes off on a new tack. I, however, will be a slave all my life – driveling me, senseless, completely incapable of planning such things! But, possibly, I will get something from her, if she succeeds. It would be right. How worthless even my calculations are, wretched me, expecting to receive thanks from a woman! Just let me avoid further trouble!
What strategies has Habrotonon used to gain her freedom?
As far as can be judged from this excerpt, is the wish of these two slaves to become free represented in a negative light or sympathetically?
What would the free audience think in hearing this slave dialogue on freedom? Would such a depiction conflict with ideas about the servile and dishonored nature of slaves?
Can we take this passage as a realistic
